Thank you, Alessandro,
for your thoughtful comments! Basically, I agree with all of
them. Let me just make three minor points:
1) I believe that the
fact that the impact factor (IF) of JBES has recently
surpassed the one of Ectca has little to do with the
editorial orientations of the two journals. Ectca has always
published more theoretical papers than JBES but its
historical IF was even 4 times larger than the one of JBES.
2) The issue of
concentration of power is not related to the so-called top
five journals only. Let me go anecdotal here. About 5 years
ago, I submitted a paper to a well-reputed econometric
journal, say J1. I got two reports by referees, one of them,
say R1, raised some issues but it was not so negative. The
other referee, say R2, was quite positive and the points
that (s)he raised required rather light revisions. Since the
paper was rejected, I asked to the associate editor – that I
know – the reason why. Surprisingly, the AE told me, in a
private correspondence, that R1 indeed suggested a R&R
with major revisions and that R2 suggested instead a
rejection because “the paper is a follow up of a work
published on J2 (a journal with less reputation than J1)
and, as such, it cannot be published on J1”. I was really
shocked by a motivation that is obviously silly; the
profession is full of papers that were published in minor
journals – or even systematically rejected – which provided
contributions that turned out to be extremely influential
later. The seminal paper on cointegration by Clive Granger
(rejected by Ectca in 1980, of which a shortened version was
published on Economic Notes in the same year) is a notable
example. I then submitted the paper to another journal, say
J3, which has BTW recently gained a clearly larger IF than
J1. The paper was finally published (after benefiting a lot
from the comments of two excellent reviewers), and it got an
individual IF that is about 3 times larger of the one of J1.
Ironically, even J2 has nowadays a larger IF than J1! I
don’t think that I was simply unlucky because I hear similar
stories from too many talented and reputed colleagues. To
cut a long story shortly, my feeling is that the editorial
boards of “historical” journals recently tend to behave as
the admission committee of a high society golf club rather
than as open-minded scientists…
3) Please allow me to go
anecdotal here as well. I come from a family of hard
scientists and I’m a kind of black sheep, in the sense that
I’m the only one that has something to do with “social
sciences”, to which economics should belong. Well, to the
best of my knowledge, economics is the unique field that has
got something as “the top five journals”. All this to say
that I cannot fully agree with your statement “There is, of
course, concentration of power in our profession. In part,
this is unavoidable.” I believe that focusing on the outlet
rather than on of the papers themselves is a terrible
mistake, which is idiosyncratic of our profession only. I
totally agree with your highly esteemed supervisor that a
paper published on a top journal with a negligible impact
should be negatively evaluated. Instead, we all seem to say:
“Oh, (s)he published on a top 5, so (s)he must be good!”.
That’s meaningless to me.
Finally, let me
congratulate for your note on Ectca! Please feel free to
share it with us! 😉
Ciao,
Gianluca
Da: Alessandro Casini
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Inviato: giovedì 31 marzo 2022 18:38
A:
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; Gianluca
Cubadda
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>
Oggetto: Re: [datascience] Concentration of power
at the editorial boards of economics journals
Thank
you for sharing. Nice article. There is, of course,
concentration of power in our profession. In part, this is
unavoidable.
Top journals are run by top department (QJE is edited by
Harvard, JPE by UChicago, Econometrica a little bit all
top-5 schools, etc.).
Top departments appoint their people as Editors. We cannot
expect to be otherwise. This affects the review processes,
and may generate some unfairness.
In particular, it is very difficult to publish in top-5
journals from authors who are not at the top schools (let
alone solo-author papers; I am an exception here, but it was
really hard-fought).
In the US and therefore in the whole profession, tenure and
career depend on where we publish. The rank of the journals
matters. Thus, concentration of power matters.
The article seems to suggest that the profession would
benefit from having Editorial boards with shorter fixed-term
appointment.
In my view, it would change little. The names will change,
but it will be always the same people.
So what to do? Well, as Gianluca noted in the email, the
profession is self-adapting to this.
The fact that JEBS's impact factor crossed that of Ecma is a
sign that people do not necessarily value more papers that
end up in top-5 journals than those that do not.
So JEBS may get more attention than Ecma. So in the end, if
a paper is good it will receive attention no matter where it
is published. That's a good thing to have. It was true in
the past and it will remain true in the future.
It should also be mention that theoretical-oriented papers
receive, in general, less cites than empirical-oriented
papers. JEBS publishes more empirical-oriented papers than
Ecma.
However, this is not a justification for papers in Ecma that
receive little cites. Even if they are theoretical, these
papers should be of very general interest and so they are
expected to get many cites. Often this does not happen.
My advisor coached me that having a paper in Ecma that gets
little cites it is bad for the CV. It just backfires.
He coached me to submit to Ecma papers when I really think
they have high potential impact. Else, avoid "just trying"
to submit them to Ecma.
Personally, I follow research topics that I feel are
important, no matter where they are published. Papers that I
do not think are good, do not get my praise or my cites,
even if they are in Ecma.
I think this is the best one can do to help the profession
to go in the right direction.
Alessandro
On 3/27/2022 10:24 PM, Gianluca Cubadda
wrote:
Care/i,
il paper in allegato non è direttamente
riconducibile alle tematiche rilevanti per questa chat ma ho
pensato che possa comunque essere di interesse.
Le evidenze ivi riportate forse spiegano
come recentemente Journal of Business and Economic
Statistics abbia un impatto maggiore di Econometrica, o come
Econometrics Journal, International Journal of Forecasting,
Journal of Financial Econometrics e persino Economic
Modelling abbiano un impatto maggiore di Journal of Applied
Econometrics e Journal of Econometrics.
Cari saluti,
Gianluca
---
Gianluca Cubadda
Full Professor of Economic Statistics
Coordinator of the Master Big Data in
Business (http://bigdata.uniroma2.it)
University of Rome "Tor Vergata"
Via
Columbia 2, 00133 Rome - Italy
Tel.
+39 06 7259 5847
WEB page: http://directory.uniroma2.it/index.php/chart/dettagliDocente/3916
--
Alessandro Casini (
" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">
)
Department of Economics and Finance
University of Rome Tor Vergata
Via Columbia 2
00133 Rome, Italy
http://alessandro-casini.com